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What else can I say but, WOW!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: December 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I don't really even know where to begin on this game. This was the very first game I ever played on PS2 several years ago. But, at the time, I got really frustrated with it and said I didn't like it. However, when I purchased my own PS2, I decided it was time to give this game another try. And, I really don't believe I could have been anymore wrong about the game then I was years back. This game was so captivating that it held my interest and my fear through every move in the game. Truly terrifying, I couldn't fall asleep for awhile after playing this game. It will truly scare the hell out of you if you play it alone in the dark.

But, overall, the story held together so well, it was like you were reading a piece of literature. And it truly should be placed on the same level as literature from the beauty it conveys. I am greatly looking forward to investing more time in this game to play it through again.

I will make you a solid gurantee that you will never be disappointed with this game. Silent Hill 2 is looking for your time and I can gurantee you that you will not regret investing time in this incredible game!

Hauntingly detailed, mentally unsettling, but just a bit too short...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: September 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My initial fears that this was just an overhyped Resident Evil clone were quickly put to rest - although the two games share a genre and pieces of a control scheme, their personalities couldn't be further apart. Where the first three Resident Evils focused on the cheesier, blood-n-guts style with a hint of puzzle solving in the name of variety, Silent Hill 2 concentrates much more on the unknown, the unexplained and the psychologically disturbing. Where Resident Evil 2 is horror in the vein of Dawn of the Dead, Silent Hill 2 is more along the lines of The Ring or The Shining.

It's that establishment of potential horror, not the actual moments of battle where the monster lies revealed, that are most successful in Silent Hill and, honestly, in most of the better films within the genre. To say that this game is lacking in real scary moments would be both unfair and untrue... I jumped more times than I'm comfortable to admit while playing through this one in the dark... but it properly uses such moments as an accent, rather than a crutch. It's been said that the most horrific monster in the world can never be captured on film, because it resides within the collective imaginations of the audience. Hollywood can never frighten you as badly as you can frighten yourself. It's this kind of mentality that I see reflected in Silent Hill 2 from the very get-go. Sure, they do eventually show you the monsters, and they're significantly horrific on their own, but they're all little more than pawns in this scheme, even the bosses. They're just around to nudge your mind in the right direction, so that the little shadows you'll catch darting around at the edge of your field of vision can be more effective and more relative to the story.

In terms of atmosphere, there's very little that this game does wrong. It's learned all the right lessons from the progression and evolution of cinematic horror and applied them to the incomparably personal experience of a quality video game. It's established a unique style, a great cluster of settings, and a wonderful premise (the lead character, James, receives a letter from his wife three years after her death, pleading with him to visit the town of Silent Hill) but the actual follow-through of the story and the accompanying character interactions are lacking. This reminds me of Eternal Darkness in a way, in that a lot of the strange occurrences and developments seem completely random and are never connected to the story itself. Almost universally, the cast is detached from reality, lacking in personality and in emotion, which works within the confines of the plot but results in the player never being fully drawn into the game's world.

I came away from this game feeling as though I'd read a short story that had been padded out and enlongated thanks to the inclusion of a dozen different unrelated asides. It's a fifty page story stretched over the course of a three hundred page novel. You'll meet five non-playable centric characters around the city, but only two of them have a real bearing on the plot, which is itself little more than a series of vague insinuations. It's a real shame, too, because all of the pieces have been set in the right place to accommodate for a much more striking, intriguing tale.

Controlling James as he explores the city is fairly easy, if not entirely ideal. Several elements of the Resident Evil control scheme have surfaced with Silent Hill 2's configuration, most notably the "boat steering" movement controls. If you didn't like standing in one place, pivoting and then running directly forward or backward in Capcom's zombie-fest, you aren't going to like it here. Personally, I've grown used to it and the steering doesn't seem to get in my way any more, but I can certainly see why some players would have developed a bitter hatred for it. One thing that differs from Resident Evil's traditional setup, however, is a fully polygonal environment and a free-roaming camera. What that means is less cheap scares and monsters hiding in plain sight, and a much more interactive experience.

I'll come right out and admit to savoring every last bit of the visual direction and graphical representations of Silent Hill 2. If there's one area that this game absolutely nails, it's this: everything from the character designs to the environments to the simple, yet undeniably successful, film grain texture that overlays every moment of gameplay... it's all an unbridled success. This is among the most thought-out, fully realized visual productions I've ever seen in a game, and even the hardware limitations of the original Xbox are addressed in a concise, effective manner that works within the confines of the big picture. The dreamlike state of your visit to the town explains away the boundaries around the playable area... you don't run into an invisible wall, there are just mysterious tarps or bottomless pits sealing off certain parts of town. You'll accept it at face value because, hey, you just fired three rounds into a set of animated mannequin legs.

Another noteworthy visual innovation is the complete lack of any kind of heads-up display or on-screen indicator. With the multitude of potential actions and inventory items that seem to have completely overtaken the industry, it's a nice change of pace to see a game with just a character and an environment on the screen at any given time. It not only keeps the playing field open for some of the more subtle effects, but also makes the experience even more akin to that of watching a movie.

The appearance of the monsters remains among the most successfully frightening I've ever seen. It's easy to throw sharp teeth, bumpy skin and red eyes onto something, call it an enemy and commence with the cheap scares. What's not so easy is introducing a baddie that's horrifying if just because you have no idea what in the living hell it really is. The bad guys of SH2 are, obviously, the latter. They don't always look so much like they're attacking you out of anger, so much as they're lashing out because they're constantly in pain and see anything that moves as a possible cause. I almost felt pity for these things, their existence is so pitiful, so filled with tragedy.

I can't rightfully discuss the visuals of this game without giving some love to the incredible lighting effects, either. I'd truthfully rank this game ahead of the original Splinter Cell in that category, and Sam Fisher's first romp was released almost specifically to show off everything the Xbox could do in that respect. In Silent Hill 2, you travel the entire city with just a flashlight, which (needless to say) is handled magnificently. Everywhere you go, that single light source is playing with your surroundings to cast all sorts of bizarre, frightening, downright malicious shadows throughout the room

I adored the majority of my experience with Silent Hill 2. The story, while thin at times, is generally workable and never really insultingly self-indulgent. The length of the game bothered me a bit, as the main game map is quite elaborate and seemed to have a lot of unrealized potential, but that goes back to the weakness of the basic plot and the lack of any major side stories of consequence. If you've got a weekend to kill and want to be emotionally shaken, this is exactly the game for you. It features one of the best all-around identities in the history of the industry, takes dozens of hints from the lessons learned by its predecessors in film, and is truly horrifying on several levels. If the story had been a little thicker and the cast had been fleshed out a little further, this would've been close to perfect.

The most morbid and twisted horror game ever!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: May 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is about a man named James Sunderland whose wife has died 3 years ago but then he received a letter with Mary written on the envelope and in the letter it says: "Well, I'm alone there now...In our "special place..." Waiting for you." So James goes to the town of Silent Hill that is deserted except a few people. James meets Angela Orosco in the cemetary and she is the first person he meets, who is looking for her "mama." Laura, who is this little girl James meets in the apartments for the first time and she doesn't see the monsters in the town, she is very innocent. Eddie is another character who James meets in the apartments and is really never explained why he's even in Silent Hill in the first place. Maria is this woman who James meets in Rosewater Park, who looks almost exactly like his late wife. Maria tags along with James throughout a lot of the game but it's freaky that sometimes you don't know exactly what happens to her or where she is.

I say this game is very morbid and twisted because of a lot of things. First, all the cryptic scriptures and notes and books. There are a couple dead people you just see lying in the street that have maps where someone drew on them and makes you wonder exactly what it means. There are also a bunch of notes written on 4 or 5 pieces of paper about something coming to kill or something like that just thrown on the street. The two books, Lost Memories and Crimson Ceremony are about rituals and just really creepy stuff, morbid stuff. Later in the game, there is this place called the Historical Society that have pictures on the walls and it's just really morbid and twisted, it kind of scares me every time I go there. Other things include a bunch a holes that you jump down and a morgue. Just about everything in this game is just really morbid at some level. It scares me so much that I only play for so long before I turn off the game. In the Rosewater Park, there is this statue that is referencing people being under the lake and makes me wonder why they would put up a statue instead of putting all these people in a real graveyard, stuff like that, morbid stuff like that freaks me out when I really think about it and that's why I like it so much. Of course in real life, I'm not into stuff like that but when it comes to video games, I just happen to like it! This game scares me a lot and I wouldn't recommend this to someone who gets scared easily.

Talk about an understatement from heck...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Just recently I have purchased Silent Hill 2. This is only my second dose of the survival horror genre, as my first was Resident Evil Code: Veronica. Man, that game was horrible... but anyway, back to Silent Hill 2. Now, after being thoroughly dissatisfied with RECV (i.e., wasn't scared like I wanted to be), I did some research on something that looked promising enough to give my heart a jumpstart. There were many people that said Silent Hill 2 was a very scary game, so I decided to buy it. Now, as I'm playing it, I dawn upon a revelation: this game isn't scary, you fools... it's downright terrifying.
I read a lot on the infamous "pyramid head", and how scary he was supposed to be, but my initial thoughts were: "Okay, a guy with a pyramid for a head... what's so scary about that?" And, now, I'd like to say that Pyramid Head made me jump so high up out of my seat I almost hit the cieling... several times over. He is, truly, utterly terrorizing.
The wonderfully rendered, disturbingly dark enviroments are second only to the beauty of the hideousness and grotesqueness of the "monsters". By that I mean that the game developers did a great job making some of the most unsettling and startling demons imaginable, and the sound and atmosphere complements that perfectly. When the radio noises start out a distant buzz and they quickly turn into full-blown static as the monsters you can't even see come near, the fear factor is definitely up there. But, as it progresses from deformed mutant... "things" to demonic manequins and mutated nurses, the radio makes more and more hellish noise to get your heart racing like no tomorrow. It's indescribable how scary this game can become.
Now, another huge advantage this game has over its meager but strangely popular competition is its intricate, wonderfully crafted and told story. Contrary to many people's opinions, I think the voice acting in this game is very well done, and helps move the plot along nicely. The musical scores, coupled with the character animations and voice acting, helps construct an ideal atmosphere for such a dark story to prosper. Speaking of atmosphere, the whole atmosphere of the game is morbid, twisted, disturbing, and warped beyond all belief, and that's just what makes it even better. They don't have sudden bursts of musical scores to make you jump, like RE does, instead, they rely on a subtler form of spontaniety - when something is going to surprise you in a cut-scene, they just have it dart out of the corner of the screen at you, without any surges of cheesy music or a direct focus on its entrance, and whatever hellish sounds it makes comes home and scares the living crap out of you (cough cough, Pyramid Head, cough cough). And even when in normal gameplay, when you've exited a room in a dark building into the hallway, with only your flashling allowing for visibility, and you automatically hear your radio blaring with piercing static meshed with psycho-metal sounds and the roars and deranged moans of a twisted demon nurse nearby, you look down both hallway directions, only to be startled at the close proximity of the enemy, it will sink your heart in your bowels which will be released soon from the shock. In short: damn, this is scary.
(Please note: hellish and damn are not curse words; do not sue me, wimps)

I've lost track of how many times I've played through this game!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best games I've ever played, it is such an incredible follow-up to Silent Hill 1, which is also a 5/5 star game. This game is a psychological roller coaster ride, which won't be for everyone, although many people like it even if they don't seem to understand the goings on in this game. Don't get me wrong, I don't want it to sound like I think I'm so much smarter than anyone, but you gotta admit that this game might be a little much for some people to comprehend. There is so much symbolism and so many little things that means something incredible. No one person could solve every piece of information this game gives you. The more you play the game the more you realize things that you didn't see the first time, wierd pictures, clippings, things like that. And lots of visual things. This game requires you to think about everything that's going on in order for you to understand everything it has to offer. For example, every monster in the game represents something about James and his past, except for one or two that has to do with other characters like Angela.
This game is also incredible because the general reason for there to be people there. You find out that everyone there who sees monsters and who don't completely understand why they're there have commit a certain atrocity. That's all I'm saying. So that does explain why everyone who's there seems to have extreme emotional disturbances. This game is definitely very grim and won't make you happy to play it, but it is incredibly moving and sad. This game does have one downside I'll admit, it didn't scare me hardly at all, I felt moved and sad because of incredible story, but it didn't scare me though. They tried to make you psychologically freaked out, and some people will be, but I personally wasn't, this isn't a big deal though. Oh and did I mention all the endings, there're 6 total on the Greatest Hits Version.
Okay, for technical things. The graphics don't bother me in the slightest so I don't understand why anyone would lower their opinion about this game cause of that. I love the voice actors for the most part. James does have a few incredibly weak lines, but otherwise the dialogue is good too. The game works perfectly fine when it comes to running, battling, using items, etc...
Overall this is one of the best games out there. I don't think I'd have done a thing different to this game. It's one of the most sophisticated, brilliant video games I've ever played.

The most solid example of SH: Same mood and imagery, but greatest, most coherent story.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: September 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

THE SHORT: Less gory and satanic than the first game, but with a great story- the most coherent and understandable in the series, and with a fantastic twist at the end. 5 possible endings, great atmosphere. Sometimes frustrating (but adjustable) puzzle difficulty but fairly easy fighting.

THE LONG: The original game was great- similar to Resident Evil but unique enough to stand on its own, the game was dark, disturbing and satanic. The problem was, the storyline was so ambitious that it got pretty sloppy and weird at the end, with some plot details (such as a drug cult) not as fleshed out as it should have been. This game fixes things by concentrating on the main character, whose journey to the same town of Silent Hill is brought on by a letter that he received from his wife. Though dead from a fatal illness, her very writing asks James to return to the town, the site of some bittersweet memories for them.

As James travels through town, he meets some strange people who all seem to be off in some way. One is remarkably passive/ aggressive, one is suicidal, one is a little girl who seems to know him, and one of them is a woman who looks just like his dead wife, which brings out some conflicting emotions in James. These characters come and go as the game goes on, and they occasionally do some odd things. But the beauty of the story is that, when all is said and done, the motivation for these characters makes absolute sense- once you realize what they mean to James and why they're in Silent Hill in the first place. Whereas the first game unravels with a lot of obscure mythological references to religious artifacts and demonic possession, this one is strengthened completely at its conclusion, a conclusion that makes us rethink the motives and actions of every character in the game.

This is true of the game's biggest, most dynamic character- Pyramid Head. An apparent humanoid with a strange, triangular shape of flesh or metal on (or in place of) its head, this character represents sheer malice to James. From the moment he discovers it in an abandoned apartment building to the time he discovers hints of its origins, Pyramid Head is one of, if not the most, creepy of the series' foes. He isn't all over you in the game but instead appears occasionally from the shadows, often when you least expect him, slowly but steadily approaching James as he tries to flee. And once you learn what little you can of him near the end, it adds to the finale more than any of the other characters. Pyramid Head has a purpose, and once it's revealed what that purpose is, that great ending starts to form and you realize how psychologically powerful this game is.

All this story would be moot if there wasn't a good presentation, which there definitely is. Like the original game, your character wanders around a misty, fog-enshrouded abandoned town where nothing feels right and glimpses of things skittering about are caught. The game starts slowly, intentionally- don't get too impatient when first running through the woods and into town, it's meant to be suspenseful and build the mood. And by the time you're an hour or so into the game, what a mood it is. This game contains what's surely one of the most unsettling locations in the series- at one important juncture you enter the town's historical society and descend several hundred feet into ground, only to find a morgue, bloody pits that go farther and farther down, and Silent Hill's long abandoned underground prison. This location alone sets some great mood, as you see scrawls of long-dead prisoners and hear things from unseen places (listen for the heavy footsteps of something that seems to be whispering "Hurt you").

The mood is also heightened by little glimpses of the town that you find. You read about a grisly child killing and hear about a mysterious shipwreck, and learn the fascinating story of why a swamp got its bloody name. Like the first game, things are never quite right- but once "the darkness" falls, things get more twisted and you're in a nightmare world. And this world seems tailor made to oppress James.

This is the first in the series to allow both free roaming controls as well as the remote-control car style used in the original game, and other things, such as the boxes of bullets and first aid kits, will be familiar to players of the first game. As will the radio that emits louder and louder white noise as you approach, and the trusty flashlight (which you'll definitely be using). So it's the same gameplay to those familiar with the series and other games like it. Puzzle difficulty is actually adjustable and quite easy on the simplest level, so this game won't have you running for a strategy guide. Unfortunately, combat is also somwehat simple. There are some neat boss fights but the rest of the game is more about exploring, not fighting (though there's a lot to fight should you choose). But this lean on exploration is appreciated since this game gives you the biggest glimpse into what Silent Hill is really like.

Lastly, there's the basic version of this game and then the updated one for several systems that contains a few new options as well as a new mini-quest revolving around the character of Maria. This is the one to get, as price-wise they're about the same, but don't expect much- the new quest is less than an hour long though it does add some interesting perspective to the game.

Long story short, it's the same Silent Hill that you may have liked in part one, and before things got increasingly less Silent Hill-ish with the next couple games. So play this game for the most definitive, moody Silent Hill in the series, and for the best, most understandable story as well- one of the best and most mature game stories in general. After all, Roger Avery, Oscar winning co-writer of Pulp Fiction, is doing the Silent Hill movie- and this one's his favorite too.

One of the Freakiest Games EVER

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

What can I say about this game? It is just incredible. The graphics are incredibly rich and detailed (especially once you beat the game and can turn the "sound effect" off), but what really makes this game is its story. Your character goes by the name of James Sunderland, a rather simple, lonely man who's wife passed away 3 years ago. However, you get a letter from her, saying she is waiting in Silent Hill, in your "special place". I love how deep the storyline goes, and how emotional it is at times. The game does an excellent job of conveying emotion, and this game is at many times a rather depressing experience.

If you can bear the 10 minute fog jog at the beginning of the game, you will be thrown into an absoloutely surreal and terrifying world. Environments like an apartment building, a hospital, a jail, and even a labyrinth, combined with disturbing, well timed sound effects create a very haunting auroa in these claustrophobic environments. This game also features alternate endings (5, to be specific that change depending on decisions you make in the game) and little bonuses for completing the game. A MUST for any lover of the survival-horror genre.

Video Games have grown up. And they are scary.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

To keep this review rather simpleton, this game is eerie, spooky, morbid and malevolent. With that said it should also be noted that this game is very fun and dare I say intelligent. There are many different puzzles that need to be solved in order to advance to other levels. Now the story line to this game is great too. A man receives a letter from his wife, several years after she has died. The letter leads him to Silent Hill, where he meets a dead ringer of his departed wife.

The graphics are good, the music is wonderful, the video is great and the game play is good. I must confess I am of the Atari generation, so it took me a bit to get use to the controls on this game. However, after some practice I adjusted well. A final note to parents, THIS GAME IS FOR ADULTS ONLY!!!!! SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THIS GAME FREAKED ME OUT!!! THEREFORE, IT MIGHT SCARE THE OATMEAL OUT OF YOUR LITTLE JIMMY OR DEBBIE!!!! Many times people don't read disclaimers and end up blaming video game companies to stop production on a game, because it is damaging their children. This would all be avoided if people/parents review the product before they buy it. Would you eat something if you didn't know what was in it?

I'm off the soap box, this is a great game.

The Silence Is Broken.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: August 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

When I first saw this game, I veiwed it as another stupid horror game with bad voice acting, annoying characters, and a bad plot.

Boy was I wrong.

Silent Hill 2 has to be one of the darkest, most horrifying games I've ever played.
Half of this has to do with the creepily-realistic rendering of the environment and most noticabally, the monsters, varying from things that look like they just walked out of a insane asylum, put in a straight jacket, wrapped in cellophane, and burned to death, then reborn, to a towering humanoid beast with a pyramid shaped helmet on its head that stalks you around everywhere. The other half has to do with the beautifull and deep plot the story provides.

The game begins with the main character, James Sunderland, talking about how he recieved a letter from his wife who died 3 years ago due to "That Damn Desiese" telling him to return to their special place, Silent Hill, and meet her there.
On his way, James runs into Angela, a suicidal girl whos looking for her mother, Eddie, a murderer who ran to the town as a flee attempt, Laura, a little girl who was friends with Mary in the hospital, and Maria, a woman that looks exactly like Mary besides her hair, clothes, and personality.
As well, James runs into various monsters; Patient Demons, Mannequins, Mandarins, Bubble headed nurses, weird cockroachy things, Doormen, and one of the most frightening, Pyramid Head.

I can't say much more without ruining the game, other then its a game that you need to play.

Awesome game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game seriously freaked me out. Controlling James takes a little getting used to, but Konami certainly makes up for it with the environment and storyline. If you like survival-horror games, this should definately be on your list!

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